Search Results: parenthood

The more than 53 million people living in poverty in Mexico are being insulted in every episode of the new Netflix reality show Made in Mexico. Nine socialites of Mexico's one per cent are the protagonists of a reality show that can only be described as a mishmash of The Real Housewives and Beverly Hills 90210, catty moments included.

If you are inclined to discount expert opinion from medicos, lawyers and criminologists, you could consider the evidence of your own eyes. Observe the body language around you if a parent hits their kid in public. A hush descends and tension increases. Post-Royal Commission, violence against kids is more and more on the nose.

The pressure starts to get to Annie when she begins to suspect her mother is haunting her. This exacerbates pre-existing tensions; her husband is caring in a mildly condescending way, but is more concerned with the wellbeing of their children. Is the haunting real, then, or just a symptom of Annie's reluctance to let go?

When Cynthia Nixon announced she was running for governor of New York the excitement was instantaneous. Not because she was a woman, as there have been no female governors of the state, nor because she once played Miranda on Sex and the City, but because she spoke in a way that captured leftie hearts the world over.

One minute you're escorting your five-year-old daughter to the school gate, the next you're popping a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and wondering where the last 17 years went. My grandmother told me children age you. I thought she meant they wore you down, put grey hairs on your head. But I understood after I'd become a parent myself. Children are hour glasses that cannot be laid on their sides for even a moment, but must be turned over as soon as the last grain of sand has fallen through the flue.

When we were all younger, I wrote about my three sons. In the words of Sir Thomas More, their characteristics strangely tugged at my heart, and like More, I fed them cake, ripe apples and fancy pears. Among other things. But eventually there was a mild rebellion about the writing, in the course of which my eldest threatened to send me a bill. Now I write about my grandchildren, three boys and a girl, who are too young as yet to be so commercially minded.

Last Friday, Victoria passed an amendment to establish a protest-free zone around abortion clinics. I find it impossible to reconcile with the idea that personhood in utero depends on whether a baby is wanted or unwanted, but I also believe bodily autonomy is integral to the dignity of women. There is such a long history of women being deprived of agency across political, economic, social, sexual and cultural dimensions, that being able to make a choice carries its own compelling morality.

As Father's Day looms, I embrace zen introspection. My beloved Keeper and I have two offspring, a daughter — a sweetheart aged 12, turning 30 — and a son — boisterously nine. Life changed unrecognisably with their arrival, and overwhelmingly for the better. This Sunday I will join the ranks of sleepy paters, gingerly drinking dubious coffee, eyeing off culinary abominations and graciously acknowledging new socks.

Behind scrub on a nondescript South Australian highway lay a battered suitcase. It had been abandoned and largely forgotten, yet its presence was incongruous in this vast, unforgiving landscape. Last month, one passer-by was so disturbed by what he found after peering inside that he contacted police. Just off the Karoonda Highway in Wynarka, in South Australia's Murray Mallee region, a terrible secret had lain in wait.

The Vatican Secretary of State's post-Irish referendum comment refers to the Church's understanding of the privilege given by society to lasting heterosexual marriage reflecting the social good of the institution. But the heaviest defeats for humanity come from government policies that focus on the individual, ignore the needs of those raising children, and penalise the disadvantaged.

Archbishop Martin voted no in the gay marriage referendum. But after the result, he says the Church needs ‘a reality check across the board’, and that means more than a new language. When Church teaching is invoked to bar women from office, to forbid contraception and condemn homosexual relations as intrinsically disordered in a way that conflicts with the ‘sense of the faithful’ of so many of the baptised, then the Church, despite the many wise things it has to say, loses credibility.

The rewards of parenthood are immeasurable. But the price that women pay when they become mothers is unjust. This includes lost opportunities, gender wage gaps, and sparse superannuation savings. They really need an efficient and fair maternity leave scheme to support them as they transition from worker to working mother. Tony Abbott's 'signature' policy is now gone, and the 'replacement' families package has a big gap to fill.